What a difference a day makes. Take September 11th for instance. Death and violence happens everyday in every country by members of every philosophical standpoint. That 9/11 involved an awful interpretation of Islam's sacred writtings is tragic. Not only to inter-religous relations but also to our worlds security as we have seen. Now we have a pastor in Florida advocating a "Burn a Koran Day". This too is tragic. That a Christian Minister would advocate such a disrespectful and potentially explosive act is in my opinion not Christian at all. It is an act of blended belief. It is in fact a symptom of a Christological nationalism that runs rampant through American fundamental Christianity.
Jesus never took sides in nationalism. His view was toward the lost sheep of Israel and beyond. He could had been purely Zionist (being a Jew himself), and picked those with whom he would deal lovingly. He did not have to heal the Romans but he did (Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:2-10, John 4:43-54). It could be argued that he didn't have to die for everyone, except the Hebrews, yet he did.
When we are engaged in Nationalism as a part of our religious belief, nothing good can come of it. War and death and destruction are the end results.
"It is the duty of Muslims to react," said Mohammad Mukhtar, a cleric and candidate for the Afghan parliament in the Sept. 18 election. "When their holy book Quran gets burned in public, then there is nothing left. If this happens, I think the first and most important reaction will be that wherever Americans are seen, they will be killed. No matter where they will be in the world they will be killed."It is a good thing to remember that, regardless of how we feel about the Koran, everyone is created in the image of God. Holy leanings and righteous indignation are a part of the temperament we retain from this "spiritually genetic" history. As God is a jealous God of his own works, so does every belief beget a jealousy of it's own works. The attachment to it is natural. To become detached is supernatural.
In Jesus' sermon on the mount (Matthew 5), God has given Christians a rule of life so different, even from the Hebrews, that the most ardent of us can hardly keep it. But we must because this is what our God asks of us.
Jesus is the image of God, and God is Love. They will know we are Christians by our Love, and by it only.
